What Do I Live For?

Last week, I opened with the image of liturgy as a sea, its waves ebbing and flowing over us and, over the course of decades, shaping us into living stones.  We reflected on how the alternation or oscillation in our experience of God’s presence to us respects the time we need to grow in authentic relationship with him, to freely let him come closer.  Advent is a call to embrace this slow ongoing formation in faith, hope and love, by a God who is on the move.

Yesterday, there appeared on the Order’s website an announcement of the 55th anniversary of the death of Thomas Merton, accompanied by this quotation, which we know is a favorite of our Abbot General, Dom Bernardus:

“If you want to get to know me, don’t ask me where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I live for, in detail, and ask me what, in my opinion, prevents me from fully living for that which I live for.” (Thomas Merton, My argument with the Gestapo, 1969).

I have been pondering these memorable words in terms of our unfolding Advent journey.  These are questions that get at the essence of things, and this liturgical season brings us face to face with what is essential.  We might well imagine John the Baptist, protagonist of today’s gospel, speaking similar words to the people who came to see him in the desert.  In fact, he would not even need to open his mouth, for his appearance says it all: camel’s hair, leather belt, locusts and wild honey, the accoutrements of a man who subsists on the word of God.  It is the function of a prophet, after all, to raise questions in the minds of those who see him.  And a monk no less.

- Ask me what I live for – and you will find yourself asking what do you live for?
- Ask me what prevents me from fully living for that which I live for – and you will inescapably ask yourself what prevents you?

I would like to spend some time with each of these questions.  Perhaps my reflections will spark your own.

What do I live for?

At the age of twelve, I received my first full Bible as a Confirmation gift.  Having been led since before I could read to know the story of God and his people through the pages of a well-illustrated children’s Bible, I was eager to embark upon my own exploration of the Scriptures.  First, I had to get over the shock of finding within that coveted book, in place of the familiar stories and pictures, a whole series of other, rather long, books with funny names.  I would have to figure out that “Genesis” meant the stories of Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, “Exodus” meant the account of Moses and the people he led out from slavery in Egypt, “Samuel” referred to the epic tale of Saul and David, and “Isaiah,” “Jeremiah,” “Ezekiel,” and “Daniel” were the location of other treasured episodes.  Turning to the New Testament, I looked in vain for the expected books of Jesus and Mary, instead finding a repetitious and sometimes contradictory series of accounts by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and a lot of letters from someone called Paul.  Confused?  Yes, for a while.  But this was the gateway to some important discoveries, most notably, the Psalms.  In that book of songs, I found words that matched the movements of my heart.

“O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
    you discern my thoughts from far away.
You search out my path and my lying down,
    and are acquainted with all my ways.” (Ps 139:1-3)

For me, this was an affirmation that the God who knew Abraham, Isaac and Jacob also knew me; the God who called and sent Moses and the prophets also called and sent me; the God who inhabited Mary, also inhabited me.  Having prayed this psalm for three decades now, I realize its significance for my life, my sense of self, my purpose.  It returns me to home base, so to speak.  It gives me courage to face whatever life brings my way.

Psychologists today tell us that the desire to be known is a fundamental human characteristic.  From birth, we are looking for someone to meet us with attention, affection, wisdom, and strength, someone to read our thoughts and feel our feelings and so help us to know ourselves.  Indeed, we come to know ourselves through the eyes of others.  If we were lucky, we had this experience of being met, at least sometimes, by parents, siblings, mentors, or close friends.  But this deepest longing of our heart can only be fully and finally met by the One who made us.  Who but God could speak these words:

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” (Jer 1:5)

Who but God could be the recipient of such words as these:

“My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
    intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
    all the days that were formed for me,
    when none of them as yet existed.” (Ps 139:15-16)

What do I live for?  To be known by God, fully and completely, to the depths, excluding nothing.  As a consequence of this, to possess myself, fully and completely, to the depths, and so to give myself, fully and completely, excluding nothing.

What prevents me from fully living for that which I live for?

John the Baptist’s call to conversion hits home, that we need to make a change to be true to our purpose, to “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths” (Mk 1:3).  I recognize that my heart is a rugged land and a rough country, its ways twisted and tortuous.  I do not walk in the ways of love and truth but instead get caught up in habitual shortcuts from feeling to action that do not allow for reflection.  Why did I do that?  What was I thinking?  Why do I feel that way?  What do those around me need?  How can I act justly?  On the other hand, I can get lost in a warren of self-defeating thoughts that keep me from the light of his face, the free possession of my inner self, and the courage to act in his name.

The Abbot General of our sister-order, the Order of Citeaux, Dom Mauro-Giuseppe reflected in his Christmas Letter on why we struggle to give Christ to the world, as is our vocation as Christians and as Church:

“The Church need not create the light: she must only reflect it, like the moon, like a mirror. The cleaner the mirror is, the more it reflects the light without diminishing it or changing it.”

It is not a question of creating something out of nothing – we already have all we need – but of taking something away – what stands between us and our full response to Christ.  “Nothing can hinder the merciful light of Christ’s gaze upon man,” but the light can be hidden, under a basket or a bed, by our busyness or our laziness, by our compulsive need to cover emptiness with achievement, or by our fearful shrinking from reality and responsibility.  And the goal?  That in us “Jesus can be fully himself, expressing all the tenderness of his presence.”

We come to know ourselves through the eyes of others.  We need to walk with God those winding paths, those precipitous heights and galling depths.  We need to know that he knows every inch of our terrain.  Only then can the paths be made straight.  Only then will the way to our deepest heart open up.  Only then can we possess ourselves such as to give ourselves away.  To put it another way, we let Christ possess us, so as to give him away to all we meet.

Guerric of Igny’s words ring true for me:

“We prepare the way of the Lord as we are bidden to do by walking along it; and we can walk along it only by preparing it.  However far you journey along it, the way is always waiting to be prepared, so that you must start afresh from the place you have reached and advance along what lies ahead.  You are led to do so because at every stage you meet the Lord for whose coming you are preparing the way, and each time you see him in a completely new way and as a much greater figure than you have met before.” (Fifth Sermon for Advent)

So let us take up our walk along the highways and byways of our life, of our heart, with the Lord at our side, desiring to “know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Cor 13:12), that he may become our Way.

“Search me, O God, and know my heart;
    test me and know my thoughts.
See if there is any wicked way in me,
    and lead me in the way everlasting.” (Ps 139: 23-4)